Speaker
Description
The study of the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP), a deconfined state of nuclear matter, remains a central focus of high-energy heavy-ion collision experiments. Light-flavor hadrons act as essential probes of the QGP, offering insights into its bulk properties. In particular, the pseudorapidity density of charged particles, which reflects the energy density achieved in such collisions, serves as a key global observable. Its dependence on the number of participant nucleons ($N_{part}$) provides sensitivity to the underlying particle production mechanisms, characterized by the interplay between soft-QCD processes scaling with $N_{part}$ and hard-QCD processes, which scale with the number of binary collisions ($N_{coll}$).
The transverse momentum ($p_{T}$) spectra of identified hadrons further elucidate the system's transverse expansion and constrain the kinetic freeze-out conditions of the fireball. Mean $p_{T}$ and integrated particle yields probe the interplay between particle production and collective dynamics. At high $p_{T}$, the observed suppression of hadrons in nucleus–nucleus (A–A) collisions relative to proton–proton (pp) collisions, quantified via the nuclear modification factor $R_{AA}$, is consistent with substantial energy loss of hard-scattered partons traversing the QGP.
In this study, we present EPOS4 model predictions for Pb–Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 5.36 TeV, focusing on the pseudorapidity density of charged particles across a wide $η$ range and for various centralities. We also report transverse momentum spectra, mean $p_{T}$, yields, and $R_{AA}$ for pions, kaons, and (anti-)protons as functions of centrality. Kinetic freeze-out parameters are extracted using combined Blast-Wave fits to the identified hadron spectra. Where available, our results are compared with the experimental data at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 5.02 TeV and recent measurements at 5.36 TeV from ALICE and CMS; in other cases, predictions are provided. The centrality dependence of these observables reveals trends that are consistent with those observed at lower energy collisions at RHIC and the LHC.
